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A nice peaceful culture deity win

I had such an enjoyable classic culture game last night I thought I would highlight the highlights. As much just myself reliving it but has some interesting aspects

Victoria standard continent no mod deity game.

I started in jungle on the coast with no fresh water. The capital has extra housing and tend to pump it for settlers so water is not such a big deal. It was in the jungle strip with some good hills, 1 luxury but it was incense on a hill which is great and 1 banana and 1 stone.

Kicked off 2 slingers and sent my barb south and he triggered a scout from a goody hut which I sent north an immediately hit water which is bad for England because starting in jungle normally means 2 continents found fast and that means more troops early.

Barb found Norway which I envoyed, they were -5 first impressions .. not too bad but I knew they would be annoyed at my lack of early navy so expected a fight.
Scout found Japan and weirdly a settler all by itself. Now I had gone for a slinger start, my top and side were water so I was unlikely to be hassled by a lot of barbs and more importantly if Japan forward settled on me I would be forced to war so... lets not be shy, taking a settler is a million times better than taking a city so I took it and forward settled on Japan and started my slingers coming down while I began on a settler. One good thing about such a early war is it will provide 30 turns of peace with Japan later when Norway will no doubt attack.

Both Norway and Japan were settled in mostly tundra so I decided to forward settle Norway as well and sent my settler down that way. In between myself and these two was Nan modal which was a nice first find for a culture game. Japan lost most his troops but still wanted fair peace terms when Norway declared on me. Japan was in a useless state and I now had 4 archers and 2 barbs but my settler was not down far enough to forward settle Norway when they declared and Nan Modal declared with them! With my settle close to Nan modal I was sort of forced to settle my second city straight away. Cleaned up Norway's troops, they were in a difficult position to attack but managed to get about 15 GPT out of a peace deal which was OK I turned my attention on Japan, raised their lands for some good gold, lost a barb and archer but managed to get a peace deal for 20 GPT.

At this stage I had my 3rd and 4th settler out both settled on jungle coast with no fresh water, not a big deal. just slows you a bit. I pushed up to feudalism while getting my final settler out and forward settling Norway at last. As I hit Feudalism I guess I had about 4 CD and 2 harbors built. As a side point a triangle of CD/Harbour and City Center will provide the Harbor with +1 gold for 2 districts adjacent and +1 to the commercial... but the commercial also gets +2 for adjacent to a harbor so the triangle gives a +4 gold benefit... its a shame I was not next to a river with my 3 coastal cities for an extra +6 gold.

I pushed up to turn 100 with 6 cities and just churned out feudalism builders galore which chopped the jungle to bits. At turn 100 I had about 3 theater squares in place 6 CD, 4 harbors and 12 trade routes. Plenty enough for victory. Japan declared again and I took useless little city off them in the deal.
At turn 100 I then concentrated on getting theater districts and projects running. The great artists produced and my great admirals made great scouts and at about turn 150 I found Kumasi which only had 1 envoy from 2 civs in it!.... late but not too late. I immediately got my spare envoy civics researched , got a couple of extra districts going in a couple of cities and got all my trade routes using Kumasi for about +100 cuture per turn.
At this stage with my great writers and theaters I was over 300 culture per turn and archaeologists were now floating out to find any artifact or shipwreck they could find. At about turn 180 I had got to cultural heritage so changed to campuses and got to computers by turn 200 with a museums full and themed around 800 Tourism. I had settled a couple of offshore cities on luxuries to allow better trade routes to other civs and now sent my trade routes to other civs as I was getting near +50% trade route civic online communities.

Germany and India declared on me and I had to upgrade some troops but fought them off (the AI is so useless at upgrading troops)... as I got within a few turns of victory at about turn 220 gilgamesh and Scythia declared on me too late to make any difference and I pretty much ignored them till the screen came up.

When I look back at my cities I never built 1 aqueduct and few granaries and no water mills. My cities were hovering around the 12 - 14 pop mark with only the housing of 8-10. I just seemed pointless when I was chopping jungle to bother with them when there was much else to do. I did build lighthouses and that is just a auto reaction of mine as I like the admirals but did not get lucky with any of them.

I did get Mary Leakey but once again she no longer provides an artifact bonus but does not provide a science bonus based on the number of artifacts housed by the city and as I am England that was a nice boost.

So you do not need fresh water or aqueducts on deity. Chopping is great, forward placement on Civ's works a treat and keeps them small, I had no navy at all until about turn 200... was quite a different and interesting game.... Can post start or end .sav here if anyone wanted to see.

nice write up but seems an awful lot of war for a peaceful game... I consider peaceful never declaring war or can push it to actually being peaceful to also include never taking cities (liberation ok).

To clarify.
All cities were founded by me apart from one small one near the end
The only declaration I made for war was at the beginning when there was an unprotected settler in ancient times. This deserves to be taken. If it had forward settled on me the game would have been quite different and that was what it was doing, walking toward my capital.
At Deity you cannot avoid declarations of war against you... in fact if you play efficiently you have a small army which means war more often get declared against you. You just cope with them, they are normally no big deal.

I've just started playing '6 again after about a year off. First game I was doing just fine in science and religion but terrible in culture, so I thought this guide might help. Abandoned that game and started another... and of course my neighbors are Russia and Kongo. The Kongo guy (can't spell his name) hates me for no particular reason, and Peter was a little too close to start with and then settled a city 4 tiles from my capital. I don't think this is going to be a peaceful game...

Edit: I declared a formal war against Peter and took that city he forward-settled at me. Moderate warmonger penalty, and nobody really cared. A little later, he declared a surprise war against me and I kicked his butt; I didn't capture any cities but he gave me a nice city for peace.

Oh, and I noticed last night that the AI have figured out how to use aircraft since I last played.